Communication between a calling party and a recipient in a telecommunications network is typically initiated by the calling party attempting to conduct a telephone call with the recipient by dialling the recipient's telephone dialling number on a calling party telephony device. In order for the call to proceed, the recipient must accept the call. If the recipient is busy or does not wish to take the call for some reason, then the calling party's attempt to conduct a telephone call with the recipient will fail.
When a calling party attempts to call a recipient, the calling party typically has no knowledge as to whether the recipient will be available to accept a call. Therefore, in order to successfully speak to a currently unavailable recipient, the calling party may have to initiate one or more a subsequent call attempts, in the hope that the recipient later becomes available for a call.
The above problem is regularly encountered when a calling party attempts to contact a call centre. A call centre is a point of contact, typically between businesses and their customers, that handles a large volume of incoming telephone calls, often from customers requiring information or some form of product support. If no call centre operators are available to take the call, the call will typically be placed in a queue to be distributed to an operator when one becomes available, typically in a ‘First-in, First-Out’ manner.
During a busy period for the call centre, there may not be enough operators to keep the queuing time down to an acceptable level. As a result, a calling party may have to wait for an unacceptably long period of time to speak to an operator, resulting in an unpleasant experience for the calling party. In order to avoid waiting in the queue, the calling party may terminate the call and initiate a second call with the call centre at a later time. However, there may be a similarly large or increased number of calls in the queue at the time that the second call is initiated, resulting in no decrease in the amount of waiting time.
A known system describes a method for providing a call back option to a customer of a call centre in response to a first call from the customer. The call back option may consist of a call centre operator placing a return call to the customer when the call centre is less busy, or arranging a time for the customer to call back when the call centre is expected to be less busy. The call centre operator may attempt a return call at a time that turns out to be inconvenient for the customer. Further, the call centre may arrange for the customer to call back at a time when the customer is not available to call back.
A known system describes a method for processing an inbound call to a call centre during a busy period at the call centre in which the caller is assigned a place in a queue and a time window in which they are advised to call back. The call centre will keep the caller's place in the queue after the first call is disconnected if the caller calls back within the time window assigned to them.
It would be desirable to provide improved methods for a calling party to contact a recipient, in the case of non-completion of an initial call.